


We Fools Who Love

by intentioncraft



Series: How Deep It Goes [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Blood, Blowjobs, Hurt Dean, M/M, Multi, Multiple Pov, Non-Graphic Violence, Open Relationships, Rimming, Sex, Siren Dean, Vampire Benny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 20:04:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6092470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentioncraft/pseuds/intentioncraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You said he likes me?” Victor starts softly. He’s momentarily lost in his own thoughts but very aware of his body, and all the places Dean touched him earlier that afternoon, every whispered word memorized by Victor’s ear, “he <i>loves</i> you.”</p><p>“I know that,” Benny looks up, puts his hands in his pockets and replies simply, a small laugh, “I question his good sense but I’d never deny it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Long time no see :D I told you I wouldn't abandon this verse, though. It's just too much fun. If you haven't already, It helps to have at least read [Gonna Make You Burn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3745930/chapters/8310091) since this fic is more or less the sequel to that one, but it isn't totally necessary. But, like, go read it. Please.
> 
> Big, big thank you to [Smilla](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/works) for betaing this for me and kicking my ass over all the dangling participles. And of course thanks to all my friends on twitter (aka cheerleading squad) for, uh, cheering me on :3

The smell clogs up Benny’s senses as soon as he enters the building, an odor sliding down his throat and sticking like mucus. It’s his own fault; instinct, really, that he seeks out the smell of home amongst the cacophony of the world outside the plate glass doors. It’s in the right place, but it’s wrong, strong, gritty and puts up a road block up in his brain so all he can do is focus on it and all its sharp angles: sex, sweat, some cologne.

The same cologne, in fact, that’s been hanging around Dean for a few weeks now.

He’d tolerated it, but now it burns the insides of his nostrils and blurs his senses to a point where he can no longer detect Dean’s familiar scent beneath it at all.

That’s what happens, though. That’s what Dean _likes_. He gets swept under someone else and thrives on the idea of being consumed by the intensity of it, for crying out loud. It’s a part of the reason why Dean fell so hard for Benny in the first place and while Benny can’t say he’s a huge fan of it, the salient bounce in Dean’s step these past couple of weeks tells Benny that this new guy Dean’s been seeing is someone special. Not only does he seem to provide Dean with enough sexual vitality to keep his hunger at bay, but Dean himself hints that he’s found something a bit _more_ than just an agreeable meal ticket.

So, Benny forces himself to remain unperturbed by the overwhelming stench, pulls his phone out of his pocket as he makes his way through the lobby to text Dean and give him and his date a head-start. _Get decent or get in the bedroom_. He adds a winky face as an afterthought and hits send.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a woman loosely hanging onto a little boy’s hand and holding onto the elevator for Benny. He waves her a thanks, but no thanks. Elevators aren’t his favourite places to be. Definitely not his favourite place to be shut in with other people. Seen one too many crime scenes in tight, enclosed spaces, blood sprayed across every wall like a bomb went off, corpses bent into unnatural positions with their clothes caught on the railing. Victims who never stood a chance, nowhere to run, no hope of escape.

The woman grants him a warm smile, oblivious to the scenes of sloppy carnage flashing over Benny’s mind. He tries his best to smile back but drops it wearily once the elevator doors slide shut with a mechanical clunk.

His stomach rumbles at the persistent mental image of blood dripping down the walls. His fists are tight; his hand is clenched around his phone when he looks down just as it makes a tinny _whoosh_ sound to let him know that his message is finally sent. Benny forces himself to relax and marches up two flights of stairs, thankfully passing nobody else, and walks down the hall of their floor. It’s also deserted, but the hum of a half a dozen televisions or radios buzzes at his ears and the warbling gibberish of overlapping conversation lashes a heavy assault on his heightened senses. His head pounds, but he waits around outside his apartment for a couple more minutes, taking care not to inhale through his nose and half-listening for any sign of life inside.

There’s some kind of jazz whining over top of everything that makes it impossible to discern any other sounds but the static hiss of the shower. Dean hates jazz, so it’s got to be his date’s choice.

He can’t help the fact that he approves.

Benny stands around a little longer but then his stomach twists painfully, this time sending a malevolent urgency throughout his entire body that whispers _hunt_. Waited too long. _Dammit_.

He pulled an all-nighter trying to track down witnesses for their latest case and then spent the entire day conducting interviews, finally calling it quits when one of his witnesses got a papercut on his business card as he passed it over, right at the end of the meeting. He high-tailed it out of there and drove straight home, cursing his own bullheadedness when he suggested that he and Dean take shifts on this one. He doesn’t like vamp cases for obvious reasons but he hates it even more when Dean is there beside him, reassuring and clucking his tongue sympathetically whenever Benny needs to take a moment and just despise what he is.

Like right now, swaying on his feet from hunger with his fangs starting to pierce painfully through his gums. His awareness of all the fragile bodies contained in this hallway alone intensifies the harder he tries to swing his focus away from the thirst, but when he picks up the sound of approaching footsteps in the stairwell he knows that he can’t stay out in the open any longer. He keys the door, turns the handle and stumbles into his home, coat and hat landing somewhere in the general direction of the coat rack.

He dimly notes the stereo isn’t quite as loud as he thought it was, and then heads straight for the kitchen to find something to drink.

The kitchen, however, is already occupied.

“Hello.”

“Uh,” the man standing in Benny’s kitchen has dark skin, dark eyes, and Benny’s fluffy blue towel wrapped around his waist, a rack of hard abs peeking over the top. The fluorescent kitchen lights glint off his damp shoulders and emphasize the goosebumps springing up along his arms from the cool air spilling out of the open refrigerator, or perhaps from the gruesome discovery he’d come upon seconds before Benny snuck up behind him.

He’s holding one of Benny’s blood bags in his left hand. It sags over his palm.

Benny slams his eyelids shut almost violently to block it all out and regain some control over the visions of slaughter and bloodshed battering away at his self-control. The man’s heartbeat pounds against Benny’s eardrums thick, fast, and irresistible.

In the elastic moment of unease, Benny manages to compose himself by narrowing his senses in on the music flowing from the speakers in the living room, enough to open his eyes into slits, tilt his head forward and say through clenched teeth, “Those are mine,” as politely as he can.

When he’s this thirsty, though, anything he says sounds like a mild threat.

He can hear the man swallow from across the room and catches the rapid pick-up in his pulse. _Thap, thap, thap_ , like there’s someone tapping at the inside of Benny’s skull with a spiked mallet, right between his eyes, beating a hole in his skull. It whites out his vision and something twists in Benny’s gut and then races up his throat. He swallows it back down with a wince, exceedingly aware that the man is observing him. He eyes Benny with caution, alert and perceptive, before he places the bag back in the refrigerator.

But he doesn’t get out of the way immediately. Instead, he grabs a sprite from the door and carefully sidesteps to the other side of the kitchen, and then says, “I, uh, I didn’t mean to...yeah.”

“It’s okay,” Benny grits his teeth, more for his own benefit because he sees his opening but he’s still not sure if his body will just involuntarily lunge for the man’s exposed throat instead of the cold, plastic-tainted blood bag in the refrigerator, “Everybody’s a bit curious.”

Thankfully, once he has the bag in his hand he already feels a lot better, _just like a goddamned junkie_ , and he notes mindlessly as he turns to the cupboards  that the naked man in his kitchen matches the heavy scent he caught downstairs, the cologne and the distinct flavour of come still evident even after a shower. And, he’s built like a fucking marine.

He keeps a close eye on Benny, his knuckles turning light where he’s got a tight grip on the towel around his waist, as Benny takes down a glass from the cupboard. He shouldn’t take his time like this; he _should_ be tearing that bag open with his fangs and practically spraying it down his throat, but the stranger doesn’t seem like the kind who would react well to that either, armed or unarmed.

Not that Benny thinks the FBI agent, because who else could he be, will try anything in Benny’s own home, mostly naked, and still wet from a shower. But moving about slowly has an effect that, to Benny’s still fairly clouded mind, pleases him nonetheless. The agent swivels on his heels and finally backs out of the kitchen area, his stance remaining combative and coiled with readiness.

“Hey, I just…” Dean turns the corner from the bedroom, _his_ towel is wrapped around his head, lopsided with the tail dangling in his face. He props it up with one hand, adjusts his sunglasses with the other. Otherwise, he’s perfectly at ease in his complete nudity, and he smiles warmly at Benny when he sees him, “Oh, hey, babe.”

Benny averts his eyes from Dean’s body. The bright purple and red hickies all over Dean’s hips and thighs leave an impression on his retinas that makes Benny’s head start to hurt once more, “Guess you didn’t get my text.”

“Uh, no. Sorry,” Dean blushes faintly as he apologizes to his date more than Benny. He nods in Benny’s direction, almost losing the towel again, “That’s Benny. And, uh, Benny, this is Victor.”

Benny smiles his widest, until it fucking hurts, right at Victor as he squeezes the cold bag of blood into the glass he took down. It squirts over the side, slides down and puddles on the light beige surface of the counter-top, but the cop keeps his gaze trained on Benny with a look of sheer suspicion on his face.

“Should I go?” he asks flatly.

Benny ignores him. That’s a question for Dean, not him, and so he takes a long swig from the glass. Blood catches in his beard but as soon as it hits his tongue the feeling that he’s about to slip under the bloodlust subsides, just like that. The ache in his bones releases him, the twisted feeling in his stomach starts to loosen and he can _think_ again. Everything seems to quiet down, loosen up, and fade back to an acceptable level.

He downs the entire glass in a few seconds, and then goes for seconds with his teeth dripping red. Dean and Victor are still and stare at him awkwardly.

Dean breaks free first from the apparently fascinating spectacle and snaps his attention to Victor, “No, dude. When I said come over for dinner I meant _stay_ for dinner.”

“Yeah,” Victor, too, finally tears his gaze away from Benny and nods at the sticky mess on the counter. Benny swipes a finger through it and sucks it off noisily, “what’s that even mean in this house?”

“Aw, come on,” Dean’s shoulders fall slightly, “Don’t…I thought you were okay with it.”

“I thought I was, too.”

Benny watches over the rim of his glass as Dean’s jaw go tight with irritation; a bit of shame crawls up Benny’s chest and sits right over his heart. He overdid it, maybe. A bit. When he wasn’t thinking straight he may have crossed a line he wouldn’t have normally crossed, and now the cop is wandering over to the armchair in the corner where Benny notices just now the pile of casual looking clothes. Jeans, a regular old t-shirt with some fancy logo on the front. His socks don’t match, which amuses Benny a bit because it probably infuriates Dean.

“I’ll be out in a minute. No hard feelings,” Benny hears Victor say to Dean as he passes him on the way to the bathroom. Dean nods, sullen, unravels the towel from his head, and relocates it to his waist, tugging it up over the markings around his navel.

Once Benny hears the bathroom door click shut, he puts down his dirtied glass and approaches Dean.

“Sugar—”

“Nuh-uh. Don’t…don’t you _sugar_ me,” he snaps and props his sunglasses on the top of his head. His green eyes are bright and lively from his afternoon’s activities, but they’re also wide and angry at Benny. Before he can fight the instinct, Benny draws a deep inhale through his nose. Dean’s shower can’t hide the stench of hurt, the bitter sweat built up under his arms and behind his legs, “You couldn’t just…go easy, huh? A glass, Benny, seriously? Since when?”

Benny shrugs, “Just tryin’ to be civil.”

“Looked to me like you’re just tryin’ to be a dick. You freaked him out.”

“Dean…”

“Fuck off, man,” Dean mutters and starts down the hall towards the bathroom.

Sighing softly, Benny follows close behind him, reaches out to turn Dean by the shoulder, and moves in between Dean and the closed door. His skin is warm and supple, and Benny’s thumb slides over the jut of his collarbone on the impulse to comfort but Dean responds with a nostril-flaring huff.

Benny drops his voice low just in case the cop is listening, “A warning would have been nice, you know. Not really what I’m ready to come home to after the day I had, the FBI raiding my stash.”

Dean shrugs Benny’s hand off with a frosty glare that says _stop being so right_ more than _don’t blame this on me_. But, once it sinks in that Benny has a point, his shoulders descend as he finally lowers the invisible wall between himself and Benny. Dean’s hurt and rejection hit Benny right in his too-full gut, “I didn’t want to make a big deal about it,” he says quietly, “Thought maybe...we talked about it a bit over food. Guess I kinda forgot about the fridge full of...” he trails off and leans towards Benny for comfort. _Big baby_. He shivers as Benny slides his hand down his spine, stopping just above his butt crack.

“Doesn’t help much that I walked in on him while I was thirsty as hell and he was butt naked, huh?” Benny chuckles and tilts his chin so his beard brushes Dean’s cheek. The siren sighs softly and goes heavy in Benny’s arms. He smells good. Faint traces of something new cling to him, the cop, Benny guess. His cologne isn’t as strong now that Benny’s senses have settled, and there’s a warm, smoky human smell soaked right into Dean’s skin that’s almost grounding in a strange way.

Benny’s so used to Dean smelling like different people, so it’s odd that Victor stands out on him like it does.

“I’ll talk to him, don’t you worry,” Benny says soothingly and rubs Dean’s back a bit longer before leaning away from him and putting his hand on Dean’s cheek, “You go get dressed and find something to eat for you two. I’ll go apologize and try to convince him that I’m not as bloodthirsty and territorial as I came across, alright, darlin’?”

Dean’s expression isn’t totally reassured, and Benny really can’t blame him after how he acted towards Victor, but he nods anyhow, flashes Benny a tiny smile, and then makes his way into their bedroom to put some clothes on.


	2. Chapter 2

The voices in the hallway rumble low and conspiratorial, and it’s not that Victor intentionally eavesdrops on Dean and his boyfriend, it just sort of happens by virtue of his career and his training and his current level of what-the-fuck-is-happening alertness. He regrets what he’s doing, almost, when the clipped, argumentative punches of their tones turn soft, practically mushy, and Victor just tries to block it out. He stares at his harried, re-clothed reflection in the mirror and thinks to himself you’re a fucking jackass, Henriksen. A fucking stupid lovesick jackass.

Here he is, in the belly — or, the bathroom — of the beast, falling in love with a hot, adorable polyamorous siren whose significant other happens to be a very scary bear of a vampire, and _Victor_ feels like the jackass for getting in the way of their weird version of domesticity. True, Benny scared the hell out of him, barging in like that with hazy, bloodshot eyes, and clearly bloodthirsty out of his mind. Victor’s seen that look on dozens, if not hundreds, of hungry vamps and were Benny anybody but Dean’s boyfriend, he’d have taken him down with a tranq full of dead man’s blood, hauled him into the closest precinct with a modified lockup specifically designed for vamps who’ve gone too long without the juice. But the fact remains that Victor is madly in love with Dean, and he can’t fathom doing _anything_ that might hurt Dean. Not even very-scary Benny is enough to shake him out of his la-la dreamland and back into a reality where he knows how to take care of himself.

He gives his face a quick rinse from the faucet, then blows out the water in his nose and sighs at his own miserable dysfunction. He and Dean have been dating, not just having sex but going out and catching _movies_ for Pete’s sake, for only a few weeks now but in his entire life Victor can’t remember feeling so wrapped up in the presence another person. For the love of God, he turns up love songs when they come on the radio and actually _gets_ some of them now. Figures it’d be a siren that shakes him up like this. Figures that this siren, despite being obsessed with sex, dessert, and 80s hair metal, happens to be one of the most careful and selfless individuals, human or monster, that Victor has ever met. It also figures that he’d be a infuriatingly complicated bastard with a vampire on the side.

 _No_ , Victor grits his teeth and reminds himself, _I’m on the side._

And isn’t that just fucking pathetic. Victor gives a rough, inward laugh. Dean, affectionate and giving as he was, could never mask his unwavering devotion to Benny and although it’s only been less than a month, they’ve have had many arguments and debates already regarding the fragile rights of the supernaturals and the many proposed solutions to mitigate the problems involved with the rapidly exploding population of vampires in particular. Victor has pissed Dean off more than a few times with his cop talk, legalese, etcetera and while Dean’s passionate about the greater population of monsters in general, it all comes down to Benny. And Dean’s fine with Benny being what he is, and he’s also fine, evidently, with how Benny chooses to deal with his own condition.

Victor, by proxy, thought he’d be fine, too.

Benny’s voice, muffled through the wood, yanks him back to the present with an unpleasant shock. Vic snaps to attention so hard his neck cracks.

The tone of voice Benny uses is soft and lazy, so changed from their confrontation in the kitchen, “Agent? You, uh...is everything…” he starts, unsure.

“It’s Victor,” he replies shortly, gathering up the wet towel and flinging over the top of the shower curtain. He does one last check in the mirror, tugging his shirt down and fixing the skewed collar, before putting his hand on the doorknob. Then he’s stuck, and heat rises up his chest and neck because, deep down and despite the breathing exercises he’d been taught in training, he’s still pretty fucking freaked out and he doesn’t know what to do.

Benny, being a vampire, has to detect the pulse thick in his veins, because Victor hears a faint shuffle as he takes a step away from the door, giving Victor room to, for lack of anything else he can do, breathe. Which he does, slowly and evenly for about twenty seconds and finally manages to turn the handle despite the continuous roaring in his head.

The air in the apartment is cooler than the bathroom, flooding over him like a goddamned salvation and bringing down the merciless heat under his skin enough to clear his head and fight back the fear locking his limbs in place.

The vampire who had, not ten minutes ago, made a pretty good show of making Victor never want to set foot in this apartment again, is leaning against the wall opposite the bathroom door with his hands clasped in front of him. His broad body is lax and easy and he greets Victor with a smile that brings apples — pale, undead apples — to his cheeks.

Victor doesn’t smile back.

“Where’s Dean?”

Benny suddenly looks wary and a bit sheepish, “He kipped down to the sandwich shop across the street. He’s not exactly in the mood to make a nice homecooked dinner anymore,” he says, and shakes his head, “I’m sorry. That’s my fault.”

For a second, Victor considers taking advantage of his clearer senses, nodding curtly to Benny and then bolting down the hallway or locking himself in the bathroom until Dean comes back. That motherfucker _left_ him. With the vampire. Alone. After all that. And Victor just — Jesus, he should just resign tomorrow. He’s clearly too stupid for his job at the bureau if this is the kind of situation he lets himself be led by the dick into.

His mouth is dry when he speaks, “He left?”

“He did.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Victor mutters and chews his lip. He says it more to himself than to Benny, but Benny hears him anyway and chuckles, low and understanding.

“I really do owe you an apology, not just for ruining your dinner,” Benny says after Victor locates the wherewithal to shake off the newest bombardment of anxiety, pass by him and walk back to the living room.  Benny, Victor notices, follows at a safe distance, “That wasn’t how...I didn’t want us to meet like that.”

Victor stops and looks around for his wallet but doesn’t let his eyes go near Benny, “No shit.”

“None at all,” Benny says, “Dean likes you a lot, but I think he’s afraid to admit it to me after I didn’t react too keenly to the idea of him dating the law. I tried to hide it, I did. But he’s sharp,” he says, and then adds with a bit of a laugh, “Sharper than he acts.”

“I’ve noticed,” Victor replies without thinking. He’s located his wallet and keys, but now, for some fucking reason, he hesitates his exit to go search out Dean in the street. He looks around, like he’s trying to find something else he’s lost, something else to delay his retreat from Benny’s presence, because suddenly he really just wants to hear _more_ about Dean, about this strange little world Victor keeps coming back to, “You got a problem with the cops?”

And it’s kind of a funny thing for a black man to say to a vampire, so when Benny gives him another twinkling smile and says, " _You_ don't?" Victor can't catch the grin before it's pulling a bit at the corners of his lips.

"Yeah, touché," he says, recalling with unpleasant clarity an instructor he had at the academy who had it out for Victor in particular because Victor didn't put up with being singled out for maltreatment by the old piece of shit, which is about as far as his police troubles went, but Benny need not know that yet, "But you...you ever..."

Benny sits himself on the back of the sofa and shrugs, unconcerned, “Not since before you were born, twice over,” he replies and crosses his arms over his chest. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, displaying hairy as hell forearms and the blurry stains of some very old tattoos, “But Dean has.”

Victor turns his eyes up to Benny’s sharply, “He didn’t have a record.”

“That don’t mean he’s innocent,” Benny remarks tightly, and then fidgets, suddenly looking uncomfortable, “Look, that isn’t mine to share. But if Dean really likes you as much as I think he does, he might. Someday.”

Speaking of Dean, wherever that asshole went, it’s taking too damn long to pick up a few sandwiches. Probably because he paused to flirt with the clerk over the plates of sliced roast beef or something, stopped in front of a window to check his reflection. Either way, Victor feels like he’s depleted his supply of good excuses to hang around _here_ , and now he’s running the risk of getting _friendly_ with Benny before Dean gets back.

Truthfully, he does kind of like it. Maybe. He’s kept his relationship with Dean secret among his friends and coworkers, unsure if he’s ashamed, scared, or just undecided about where it’s all headed. So whenever he’s with Dean, it’s like entering a different world altogether that nobody but the two of them know about, like anything that happens there isn’t real or didn’t happen in the same world that Victor gets up and works in every day. And then when Victor leaves it, he feels almost _bursting_ with a complicated blend of emotions and fantasies and futures that he can’t talk about with anybody, which is, of course, super healthy and hasn’t been affecting his mental well-being at all.

But here, with someone even more entangled with Dean than he is, someone who knows more of Dean’s history and preferences and stupid habits than he does, Victor feels a budding...something...with Benny. He actually wants to _talk_ about these things with Benny.

“I respect his privacy,” Victor says, controlling his tone, “But has he hurt anybody?”

Benny answers quickly, “Nobody who didn’t deserve it.”

“Coming from a vampire, I’m not sure what that means.”

An eyebrow goes up, but Benny says nothing.

“Sorry,” Victor says hastily. It’s stupid, but he feels bad about taking cheap shots at Benny. He makes jabs at Dean all the time. Sex demon, little mermaid, and so on. Dean’s comfortable enough with what he is, and what he isn’t, to go along with the jokes. He’s accepted that he’s got this dangerous, dark power and that he can hurt a lot of people with it. He’s accepted that it isn’t going away, so he might as well try to live his life and fit in anyhow. He can get by in a way that doesn’t harm people; he just needs to be careful.

With Benny, though...Victor has encountered a lot of vampires and the vamps he pulls in from the streets, the ones who do go out and hurt people just for the fun of it, they justify their thirst with all sorts of philosophies and new-world manifestos. Then there are the vamps who go off like a firecracker and take out someone they love, their crimes committed in a fugue of bloodlust but crimes all the same. In either case, Victor’s seen denial in these cases, and he’s seen acceptance. The denial becomes a constant war that they fight and continues to cause damage until the suspect can’t fight anymore. Acceptance is when justice can begin to happen.

Although Benny might not be unique in the grand scheme, he is unique as far as Victor’s experiences go. Benny doesn’t appear to deny that he’s a bit frightening, dangerous, even if he doesn’t _want_ to be, but if Benny’s accepted what he is, then Victor thinks that he might be wrong about what acceptance is.

There is no justice in someone being forced to survive on illegally acquired blood bags just so they don’t go out and hurt innocent people.

He’s starting to see Dean’s point of view, but more than that, he’s starting to see how things need to change.

Benny waves him off, stiff hand, and checks his watch idly.

“You said he likes me?” Victor starts softly. He’s momentarily lost in his own thoughts but very aware of his body, and all the places Dean touched him earlier that afternoon, every whispered word memorized by Victor’s ear, “he _loves_ you.”

“I know that,” Benny looks up, puts his hands in his pockets and replies simply, a small laugh, “I question his good sense but I’d never deny it.”

“And you’re just...you’re _okay_ with him going out and fucking other people?” It’s what he’d wanted to ask his partner, Reidy. _Hey, man, is this normal?_ He almost asked that yappy IT chick Charlie the other day because she doesn’t know him from any other agent whose computer won’t cooperate and if she held it against him, he wouldn’t exactly care. He wants to know if this was an okay situation to find oneself in, being in love with someone who is in love with another, but totally open to fooling around. So asking Benny himself seems almost like poking the sleeping dragon in the eye with a stick, “It doesn’t bother you?”

Benny’s icy eyes narrow at that and Victor is distantly aware that his own voice sounds almost angry, a peculiar realization given that he's technically the other man, here, but Benny seems more amused by the question than annoyed.

“I am. He’s my boyfriend, and I love him, but he ain’t my property,” he replies, and then strokes his chin with his thumb and index finger, sighing, “And he’s a siren. It just don’t work the way he needs it to with me,” he replies robotically.

Suddenly, Victor feels like he knows too much about this, “he told me that.”

The discomfort doesn’t last long, however, and Benny’s face breaks into that, admittedly, glowing smile again, the flash of amusement turning outright giddy, “What, you thought I’d go all jealous vampire boyfriend on you because you give Dean something I can’t, didn’t you?” he says, and laughs softly as Victor’s heart rate fires right up again. _Guilty_ , “You think I’m afraid he’ll stop loving me.”

“I’m not exactly used to being a homewrecker.”

“Agent, you ain’t homewrecking. Me and Dean have been through more than you can take down,” Benny replies, fingers on his lips like he doesn’t know what words he wants to say next, or if he should say them to Victor, “We don’t go walking around with it written on our foreheads in permanent marker, but what’s between us, it goes deep.”

“Hm,” is all Victor can say to that. It’s _something_. That’s what Dean said.

 _This is something, too_.

“Do you think—” Benny starts, and then looks toward the window abruptly when a police siren screeches down the street like a banshee, and then continues to wail very close by. Benny hurries over to the window, his body suddenly taut with concern, and pulls the slats of the blinds apart. He swears.

“What is it?” Victor barks, “What’s going on?”

“Don’t know,” Benny replies, and then sighs, affectionate despite the worry lining the edge of his tone, “but there’s three cars circled around the sandwich place and people outside in the street.”

“That’s where—”

“Yep, guess we better go find our boy.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dean’s stares at his bloodied knuckles where he’d been peeling away the broken skin with his teeth for the past five minutes, hunched by the shop window and studiously avoiding any and all attention that comes his way. The blood wells up in the cracks he only made worse with his shit-for-brains coping and he wipes it on the napkin clutched in his other hand.

The shop smells like blood and mayonnaise, a bit of both smeared on the linoleum floor along with the contents of two sandwiches, a bag of chips, and a middle-aged man in a collared shirt face-down and sobbing between fast gulps of air. He’s drooling a bloody puddle from the cut on his lip he earned when he tried to throttle Dean from behind, and Dean attempts to feel nothing for him. It was self-defense, but the pity and guilt is cold and leaden in his chest, utterly saturates him. His naked eyes fixate on the man; it’s the only place he can look, and the one place he _shouldn’t_ look especially with his sunglasses snapped in half and probably crushed underfoot, but the misery squeezes around his throat and he’s torn with the urgency to take responsibility for this, because the man crying on the floor shouldn’t have to.

Then the guy starts to wriggle on the floor and howl incoherent words in a scratched up voice. It draws the police officers’ attention away from questioning the blonde clerk behind the counter, and they get on their knees to keep him still, tell him to shut up. Dean has to look away then, and he wishes he could do more than block out the sight of it because he can still hear the man shouting at him, hurling names and profanities and accusations that he can’t quite dismiss.

So, he puts his head down on the sticky table and waits for the cops to need him for something, or to arrest him if that’s what’s going to happen. The right side of his head stings just above his hairline and when he checks it, his fingers come away bloody. His cheeks also feel wet with more blood, scratches from the man’s ragged fingernails and his ankle feels a bit fucked up from when the guy dragged him down to the floor and Dean fought gravity, like an idiot, stumbled over the poles marking the line direction and landed hard on his tailbone.

“Dean!” a loud, commanding voice carries over the scene and Dean forgets himself long enough to lift his head and look up. Victor strides easily through the sea of blue, dressed in the same clothes Dean stripped him of earlier that day and pocketing his badge after flashing it to one of the cops who tries to stops him. His eyes are trained right on Dean.

“No, dammit,” Dean moans and he looks away, out the window, squeezing his eyes shut tight. Shame, fear, and misery clamp down on his throat again, “Vic, it’s not—”

“Hey, relax, Winchester,” Dean hears across from him in the booth. Victor’s knees bump his under the small table and Dean swallows the bile rising in his mouth, “Jesus, you look like hell.”

Dean’s voice doesn’t come out as anything more than an affirmative grunt. He peels his eyes open but keeps his face turned away from Victor. The diner window’s frosted logo provides an interesting enough focal point with the crowd and flashing lights outside, blurry and indistinct. No way he can hurt those people out there.

“Hey, darlin’. Budge over,” a firm hand on his bicep lets him know that Benny is there, too, and that’s when Dean just about stops trying to act like this is nothing because he's seen Benny at so many crime scenes where some vamp lost it on some innocent human, and he’s seen how it fucks with him. Benny gets surly and distant, much like Dean is right now, but it’s been years since Benny’s found him in the middle of a mess like this and a part of him suddenly feels very lost and very, very young.

He scooches over obediently so Benny can take a seat right next to him with his thigh solid against Dean’s. Victor’s knees, Benny’s thigh. Dean focuses on these things, and the lights outside.

And then a dark hand crawls over the formica tabletop and Dean flinches, but allows Victor to wrap his warm fingers around Dean’s cold, bleeding ones nonetheless.

“I didn’t do this,” Dean blurts out, “I didn’t—I was just getting some fucking sandwiches, I paid and then I turned around and he—he fucking lost it on me.”

“I believe you, brother,” Benny puts his arm around Dean’s shoulder, “I know you better than that.”

It’s not Benny that Dean’s worried about, “Victor?”

The FBI agent is quiet and Dean is pointedly keeping his gaze away from him, but Dean sees out of the corner of his eye the way Victor’s lip curls over his teeth.

“I just want to hear what happened.”

Great. Now he’s being interrogated by his date. Dean sucks in a breath, steals his hand back from Victor and rubs both over his face. He forgets he’s bleeding, and his hands are smeared with red and he’s about to wipe it off his hands when he hears a commotion: the man on the floor starts to yell and sob louder as the cops put him in cuffs and start to drag him to his feet and out the door, explaining to him his rights on the way.

“Wait!” Dean shouts and tries to stand up, forgetting that he’s kind of caged in by Benny. He stumbles and catches himself on the table, coming down hard on his wrist and leaving sticky red fingerprints on the surface that Benny leans away from.

“Wait, don’t arrest him. He’s sick. He needs a hospital.”

The cops don’t look at him, and Dean not exactly surprised by it because he hasn’t been super cooperative with them the entire time they’ve been here and they know what he is. They don’t _like_ what he is, but the facts of what happened here are plain, and with too many witnesses to argue otherwise, they don’t try to twist this into something it’s not.

“Dammit, listen to me,” Dean says louder and scrambles his way over Benny’s lap. His ankle gives out though, and he winds up crashing to the floor, Victor at his side helping him to his feet in seconds, “Take him to a hospital,” Dean repeats, and then quieter, to Victor, “Siren sickness. Someone drained him right to the edge and left him there,” he says, hoping that Victor knows what the hell he’s talking about. He must. He works for the bureau’s goddamn monster squad.

Victor’s fingers dig into Dean’s elbow, but he nods in understanding.

“Hey, boys,” he pipes up, letting go of Dean’s arm and replacing it on his shoulder instead. His cop voice grabs their attention in an instant, ringing authority over their heckling of the man in cuffs, “You heard the man. He isn’t pressing charges. Give the fella a ride to the ER.”

And that, much to Dean’s annoyance, does the trick, because the two buddy boys in blue look at each other, and then at man hanging limp, white, and glassy-eyed between them, still muttering incessantly, and they give Victor a friendly nod. Like they’re old pals or something. Who knows, they might be.

Dean huffs and slumps against Victor’s arm.

“Thanks.”

“Any time,” he replies, and then catches Dean’s gaze for a fraction of a second before Dean looks away, conscious of how tired he feels suddenly, “You should probably see a doctor, too,” he touches Dean’s forehead with his free hand, making Dean wince.

“I’m fine,” he growls.

“No, you’re not. You won’t even look at me,” Victor bites back.

“That’s because I _can’t_ ,” Dean says and yanks hard away from Victor, stumbling into a  wall that he quickly realizes is Benny, quiet and concerned, “Unless you wanna end up like the dude who just tried to take a piece outta me.”

“He was sick before he laid eyes on you, okay, Cyclops?” Victor says, “What happened to him isn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, well. I’m the reason he gets to take a fun ride in the backseat of a cruiser.”

“At least he’ll end up in a safe place where someone can take care of him, chief,” Benny reasons in that too quiet, too calm voice of his and puts a hand around Dean’s waist, “Victor’s right, though. You look pretty messed up. But I think can fix you up at home, if you’d prefer.”

Dean goes silent, gives up and nods in acquiescence. He limps out of the sandwich shop, taking care not to step all over the sandwich debris left behind from the attack. The place cleared out pretty quickly as things were happening and once things were over, witnesses milling about outside, too scared to stay in Dean’s presence and now very aware of what he is. The clerk behind the counter gives Dean a wide-eyed, open-mouthed stare as he nods in her direction and exits the building with Benny and Victor close behind, and gradually catch up so they flank him at either side.

“Oh, right,” Dean squints into the sun hanging low in the sky, casting long shadows in the street and darkening the sidewalks. He angles his head towards Victor, “Was it mayo or mustard you hated? I couldn’t remember so I ordered one of each and figured I’d eat whatever you didn’t.”

Victor laughs, drawn back into the comfortable companionship now that they’re out of the sandwich place, and puts a warm hand on the back of Dean’s neck, parallel to Benny’s hand, much lower on Dean’s back, “You’re confused, Winchester. I like both, especially together. It’s ketchup that’s nasty.”

—       

The atmosphere in the apartment is still tense once they return and put in an order for pizza instead, but Dean knows it’s not because Benny and Victor still hate each other or because they’re having some kind of pissing match over him. On the contrary, they seem just fine, just fucking peachy, banding together to badger Dean into sitting down at the dining table so they can take stock of his absolutely minor injuries.

Victor, at least, is smart enough to just help Dean prop his ankle on another chair and grab some ice for it from the refrigerator. It’s probably not even sprained, just twisted, but neither of them listen to him and they just tell him to sit still, dammit. Dean complies but vocalizes his aggravation at regular intervals. They both ignore him with faint smiles on their faces as Benny points Victor around the kitchen to help him find a clean dish towel to wrap a ziploc bag full of ice in at the same time he dabs a cotton ball soaked in some kind of antiseptic that stings like a bitch with each pass over the cuts on Dean’s face. He holds Dean’s chin in the curve of his palm so he can turn his head and examine the damage.

“I told you, I’m fine,” Dean says, words distorted by Benny’s grip.

“Just makin’ sure the goods are intact,” Benny replies with a short chuckle right before he plants a kiss on Dean’s cheek, “Still pretty,” Dean leans away with an indignant scowl. Benny laughs even harder, shoulders shaking, and gathers up the used cotton balls to go throw them out. He calls over to Victor, “You see what I have to deal with? It’s like daycare, most of the time.”

Victor’s laugh is warm and comfortable as he sits down in Benny’s vacated seat with his homemade ice pack and beckons Dean to move his foot from the chair under the table to his lap. Dean does as he’s told and Victor rests the ice over the ankle joint, smoothing his calloused fingers up Dean’s exposed calf.

“Dude, stop,” Dean grumbles and tries to squirm away.

“He’s ticklish right behind his knees,” Benny offers when he returns. He leans his ass on the table and reaches out to rub the cut on Dean’s lip right before he kisses him on the mouth. Dean’s getting too tired to resist, but he’s still acutely aware of Victor right there, nursing his foot, so he breaks the kiss off quickly.

Dean settles back on the seat, coughs, puts his fingers over his lips, and instinctively fixes the sunglasses that Benny fetched for him as soon as they got home. He looks over at Victor, who is pointedly _not_ looking at either of them but bears the tiniest smirk on his face.

Dean clears his throat, “I’m not sure how I feel about…” he wags a finger between the two of them, “This.”

“Really?” Victor says, mask of innocence, and then looks over at Benny with a wicked smirk on his stupid pretty face, “I can’t think of a single reason why it’d be a _bad_ thing if your vampire boyfriend and human boy toy got together sometime and compared notes.”

Benny’s reply is to chuckle, dark and devious.

“Jesus Christ,” Dean groans, and then winces when Victor moves the ice pack over an inch, “I need a drink. Or six.”


	4. Chapter 4

The evening darkens their bedroom, but the dim moonlight spilling from the curtained windows combined with the simple fact that he’s a creature of the night grants Benny the opportunity to see things even after the lights go out. Dean is pale in the glow, almost blue, but the mouth-shaped bruises along his hips and thighs stand out like stains on his ghostly skin as he lies atop the sheets, shameless and bare.

“He suck you off?”

The question is soft and easy. Dean doesn’t even open his eyes to reply, “Mhm.”

Victor left for his own place around nine. The pizza they ordered to replace the sandwiches that were to replace Dean’s home cooking arrived a little after they finished cleaning Dean up, and so they sat around the living room chatting for a few hours about work things, tv shows, and then, to Dean’s mild annoyance, local music. From there, they moved on to tormenting Dean by talking about _him_ and so Dean begged them to talk about boring bands again.

By the time Victor looked at his watch and decided to leave, he and Benny had made plans to catch a show sometime and Dean was already sleeping on the couch with his legs flung over Victor’s knees, his arms crossed tightly over his chest with a small pout on his lips.

“Isn’t that adorable,” Victor cooed mockingly.

Benny laughed and saw Victor out, earning a friendly clap on the back and a promise to make a better second impression, to which Benny could only nod in agreement.

Later, when he’s lying next to Dean in bed, on top of clean sheets, he can still smell Victor’s sweet, smoky presence, and at this point he’s not sure if it’s clinging more to Dean’s body, the bed they’re lying on, or to Benny’s newly formed memories of the warmth of Victor’s hand a ghost of a sensation on his shoulder. The sight of the hickies splotched over Dean’s groin brings the now familiar scent right to the surface of his mind, and then he’s shimmying down the mattress and throwing his body over Dean’s legs before he can ask himself _why_.

“Mmm,” Dean moans sleepily as Benny kisses a purple mark on his hip. His mouth is open and lazy on Dean’s skin, tongue skating over the jut of the bone and bringing a shiver up Dean’s legs that makes heat bloom in Benny’s gut. The bruises taste different than the unmarked skin. They’re metallic and warm  and — Benny’s sure he’s imagining this part — taste like Victor smells. Each one marks a part of Dean that’s been worshipped and claimed by Victor’s mouth and while Benny was completely honest when he said that Dean was free to sleep with whomever he pleased, there exists a faint, unexamined sprig of want in Benny to draw a line between the three of them. Not to divide them and mark off territory, but to connect.

He tells himself, it’s because of Dean. He just wants Dean to be happy. He wants Dean to be able to have everything he wants and not worry about who he _belongs_ to.

Which is true, but it’s not _the_ truth.

“Don’t stop, babe,” Dean slurs and bats a clumsy hand towards Benny’s face, missing by a lot as his fingers slap his own belly, “Want you to...to…” Dean yawns so wide his jaw cracks, and his head sinks deeper into the pillow.

Benny laughs softly drops a chaste kiss to his stomach, right beside Dean’s fingers, “Don’t worry, sweet. I’m just takin’ my time with you.”

And that he does. He carries on his slow progress over Dean’s waist, and then moves on to his thighs. Those thighs, in Benny’s opinion, are perfect, and the thought to ask Victor if he also thinks this occurs to Benny before he has a chance to check himself.

Dean’s thick and muscular, because with a job like theirs it pays off to stay fit, but the shape of them is a smooth, graceful expanse of flesh covered in a soft layer of light-coloured hair. His femoral artery pumps beneath the surface; the torrent of blood flows right against Benny’s scruffy cheek as he rests his face on Dean’s leg, listening to the hum of life inside him. He listens, and considers Dean’s limp cock in front of him.

Like the rest of him, his cock is slack and sleepy, but when Benny rolls onto his stomach and takes the smooth head between his lips anyhow, stroking the silken shaft with his tongue, Dean’s breathing grows a little harsher, a little deeper, and his cock starts to harden in Benny’s mouth. He smiles slightly around it, watches Dean flutter his eyelids and lick his lips as a small, vulnerable noise falls from them. He wishes for a moment that he could keep Dean like this forever, serene and blissful and comfortable in his abandon.

But, of course, Dean can also be an impatient fucker and gradually he starts to pump his hips off the bed, not much, but enough to push deeper into Benny’s mouth, and create more friction and more need than his sleepiness can contain.

“God…” he rumbles, his arms flung out and pulling the sheets into a mess with his fists. His eyes are open now and unfocused in the dark room. Benny can see the faint omnipresent green radiance in them, glimmering like a ghostly beacon in the middle of a hurricane. A light for wandering moths, “God, Benny…”

His voice goes off in a frantic flurry of whispers, a ripple of hoarse curses tumbling out as Benny caresses the shaft with the tight seal of his lips and works Dean’s dripping slit mercilessly with the tip of his tongue, cradling his tight balls in one hand and rubbing his thumb between them, and then stretching his index finger into Dean’s crease and against his hole. The sharp gasp Benny gets in reply when his finger is barely a knuckle deep in Dean’s body makes his own dick wet the front of his underwear.

Suddenly, Dean’s phone blips and buzzes across the nightstand, lighting up the room with a fuzzy glow. It registers to Benny, but apparently Dean is content enough to ignore it and continues to writhe carelessly under Benny’s attentions.

Benny makes an outrageous sucking noise when he pops off Dean’s dick and looks up at him, noticing just now that Dean’s rolling his own nipple between his fingers, “You gonna get that?”

“Dude,” Dean says, annoyed and close to hysterical but still reaching blindly for his phone on the nightstand, “Get back to work.”

“Yessir,” Benny smirks and lowers his gaze back down to Dean’s cock. It’s shining from his mouth, the head dark with arousal, but Benny changes his game plan and lowers his body further down Dean’s length and settles himself on his haunches between Dean’s knees. Dean’s busy punching something into his phone when Benny grabs a couple pillows from his side of the bed and says, “Lift.”

“It’s Victor,” he remarks plainly and stares at the screen. The light from the phone highlights all the cuts and bruises to his face from earlier in grim relief; the bags under his eyes give him a haunted look, but there’s a smile spreading over his face nonetheless.

“Yeah?” Benny feels a small thrill of excitement in his chest as he slides the pillows under Dean’s hips, lifting his ass off the bed just enough that Benny won’t break his back doing this. Despite the shit that happened today, shit that ought not to have happened, he can’t help the overall absence of regret about most of it. However, he still prefers when Dean doesn’t get punched in the face, “What’s he up to?”

Dean attempts to shrug in his current position, “Just askin’ how I am. If I’m doing okay,” he says, “Asshole. He's just gonna bitch at me if I'm not sleeping.”

Benny lowers himself until he can’t see Dean’s face anymore; he kisses  the underside of Dean’s cock and then wraps his lips around his sac, rolling his tongue over them and tasting Dean’s dark musk. He hums contentedly and uses his tongue to stroke a firm line when Dean gasps sharply, “ _Shit_.”

Dean’s all heat down here and it bleeds off his skin like a molten liquid, catching Benny’s face and neck and making him feel sticky and wet. The air is humid and thick with _Dean_ , suffocating and delicious. Thankfully, Benny doesn’t have to worry much about breathing, and when Dean’s thighs tighten around his ears, Benny’s beard raking along the smooth inner skin like sandpaper, he sucks and slurps at Dean’s balls and cock until Dean  is whimpering and keening like he’s dying of pleasure.

After torturing Dean like this for a few rapturous minutes, Benny uses his superior strength to pry Dean’s legs open enough that he can surface. The cool air hits him like a winter breeze, sweat — mostly Dean’s since it takes a lot more for Benny to start sweating — drenches his cheeks and forehead but it dries quickly.

“What are you gonna tell him?” Benny asks, not at all out of breath.

“Who?” Dean says dazedly.

“Victor. What are you gonna tell him?”

Dean’s glassy-eyed and splotchy from his stomach all the way up to his cheeks. The blush suits him, unabashedly colouring his pale skin with desperation and need. His mouth is dark, too, and plump from biting his own lips, and Benny has a moment when all he wants to do is abandon this endeavour and just kiss Dean’s soft mouth until Dean does go to sleep.

It’s almost a full minute of gentle eye-fucking and slowly caressing Dean’s quivering thighs before Dean responds in a quiet, tentative voice, his eyes wide and daring and, honestly, in this state, Benny will give him anything he wants.

“I’ll tell him that you’re driving me crazy, right this second.”

With his fingers still under Dean’s knee for a second, he catches Dean’s eyes and draws  out the sly sparkle of intent. Benny smiles and presses a small kiss to Dean’s knee before he leans forward over his body and takes that perfect mouth with his greedy, hungry tongue.

“Are you gonna tell him how?” And he can hardly believe it’s him speaking, but his stomach does an urgent somersault at the idea of Victor knowing exactly what they’re up to right now, exactly how he’s taking Dean apart.

Dean slurs against Benny’s cheek, “I—I dunno if he’ll go for—”

“Worth a shot, huh?” Benny starts to go back down on Dean, watching the expression on Dean’s face fly through some mental scenarios, through the entire evening, trying to figure out what exactly has happened here that Benny is willing to mix up their sex lives. How he went from intimidating Victor in their kitchen to wanting to engage in some kind of a sexting threesome. What the fuck _exactly_ happened in the twenty minutes when Dean went down to buy sandwiches and got jumped instead. Benny would take the time to talk about it, normally, but even he isn’t totally settled on why he wants Victor in on this or why he wants to share it so badly.  

Why he wishes, in some deep buried part of him, that Victor could be here in person.

Dean is contemplative when Benny drops down between his legs and adjusts the pillows under his hips, pushing Dean’s legs further apart so he has better access to Dean’s perineum and ass. His fingers coil around Dean’s cock. It’s hot, and Benny squeezes the base with his thumb caressing the vein underneath, listening once more to the blood thumping quickly through Dean’s legs.

The phone goes off again, but Benny doesn’t look up this time. Instead, he makes good on his promise to drive Dean crazy and licks a wide, wet strip from his balls to his asscrack, his tongue wedging just between his cheeks as Benny presses his lips down on the delicate skin there, kissing and nuzzling and licking Dean ruthlessly.

“Jesus, _fuck_ ,” Dean gasps and slaps the mattress with his hand his free hand, “He says...he’s askin’ what you’re doing to me, he wants to know…” he trails off, disbelieving.

Benny says, quite muffled against the curve of Dean’s butt, “Tell him,” and then uses his free arm to hike Dean’s backside up a bit, his knees flung over Benny’s shoulders and his heels digging into his back. Benny uses the leverage to angle his face further into Dean’s crease, eyes closed and blinding searching with the point of his tongue for Dean’s hole.

“I can’t do this,” Dean whines petulantly, “I can’t type things when you’re, oh—oh, God…”

His tongue sinks into Dean, a surprise for both of them, and Benny grunts short and triumphant as his tastes the heated inside of Dean, flexes his tongue in and out of him and jacks him off at the same time. Dean’s moans are music; they flow from the head of their bed in a constant, rolling stream of notes and syllables, rise and fall with the flicks and strokes of Benny’s tongue inside of him.

The muscle he tends to is pliant and loose, Dean’s body still trying to spring back from his earlier activities with Victor. Victor, who’s waiting for Dean to text him back and tell him what Benny’s doing to him, tell him where Benny’s mouth is right now and how he’s making Dean moan, tell him that Benny’s tongue-fucking the same hole that he sunk his cock into just that afternoon and now, perhaps, Victor’s sitting in his own bed, miles away, with his dick in his hand and pumping himself and imagining what it would be like if...

“Christ, Christ, man, I’m—” Dean’s body coils, rises of the bed and squirms, but Benny uses his strength and the firm grip on his cock to keep Dean’s hips pinned so he can keep his tongue buried right where it is, licking the twitching entrance and plunging his tongue in as deep as it can go. He listens to the sweet sounds of Dean’s agonized pleasure, his stuttered breaths, and the fragile silence contained in the explosively tense moment right before he seizes and comes. Dean makes a punched out “agh” sound as his body goes without him, shivering and arching off the bed and his calves pulling Benny even closer. His cock drips hot and wet down Benny’s hand and he uses the extra slide to stroke and squeeze Dean through his orgasm and aftershocks, with his tongue still lapping at the spasming walls of his asshole.

“My phone…” Dean says at last, once his cock is soft and limp against his leg once more and Benny’s found a comfortable position to rest, “Where the fuck…Benny,” he says.

Benny’s eyes look up, almost painfully, from where he’s got his head resting once more on the soft pillow of Dean’s thigh, listening to the thrum of his pulse. The happy blend of endorphins saturating his bloodstream is intoxicating even through layers of muscle and skin, “Yeah, sugar,” he mumbles absently.

“Victor,” Dean says simply and starts to sit up and jostle the bed, throwing the sheets around until he goes “ha!” and the phone’s bleached light casts funny shadows on the speckled ceiling. Benny closes his eyes and listens to Dean’s body and the sound of him tapping at the screen of his phone.

“ _Man_ ,” Dean says in the dark. He sounds somewhat mystified, maybe even confused by his own words, “We owe Victor a hell of an apology.”

He’s still awake enough to remember Dean’s question — _what if Victor’s not into that_ — and Benny suddenly stiffens and tilts his head up, “What for?” he asks, letting his tone betray none of the sudden worry in his stomach that he crossed another. If he messed this up for Dean…

“Blue balls,” Dean starts to laugh, his free hand raking through his bed hair nervously and making it even messier. His eyes are wild and hazy and drunk on afterglow, but he sounds alive and delighted by what he’s just discovered, the possibilities becoming more real by the second, “I think the kinky bastard was trying to follow along and we, uh. Just kind of left him high and dry.”

Benny groans in sympathy for Victor, not just for this but for Victor’s entire day. His entire relationship with Dean confuses him, no matter what kind of front he puts up, it seemed to Benny that Victor is lost between worlds. Human and monster being one such binary, but it’s so much more than just the one.

And Benny, God help him, wants to bring him into their comfortable little liminal space.

Running his hand up Dean’s calf and clinging to the Dean’s waist as he drifts closer and closer to sleep, all Benny can manage with his sore, sleepy, stretched mouth is a mutter.

“We’ll just have to make it up to him, won’t we?”


End file.
